The World Health Organization (WHO) has submitted their recommendations on guiding principles and outputs for the first Global Stocktake of the Paris Agreement (GST). 

These recommendations were developed in consultation with the Global Climate and Health Alliance (GCHA), the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change, the Wellcome Trust, and other members of the global health community, and reflect WHO’s mission to support countries in delivering a comprehensive health response to climate change.

Recommended Guiding Principles

1. The GST must be science-based.
2. The GST must raise collective ambition.
3. The GST must protect the health and wellbeing of people.

Proposed Outputs for the GST

• A rapid, equitable phase out of fossil fuels is essential for 1.5°C and for a liveable future.
  The burning of fossil fuels is the main contributor to global climate change, and is already affecting the health and survival of populations worldwide. Only a full and rapid fossil fuel phase-out will deliver the protection and benefits needed, while enabling low-carbon and climate-resilient development.

• Evaluate the extensive health and economic benefits of climate action.
  Reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions will lead to substantial benefits for public health, equity, and economies. An important function of the GST should be to monitor and quantify the health harms avoided, and the health co-benefits that are generated, by climate policies.

• Strengthen adaptation action for long-term resilience and wellbeing.
  The GST should enable transformational adaptation actions that will lead to long-term resilience and wellbeing. It should incorporate public health metrics for measuring progress on adaptation.

• Protect people from loss and damage.
  The GST should acknowledge the establishment of a Loss and Damage fund, and should reinforce the process for scaling up both quantity and quality of climate finance provisions, while ensuring the additionality of loss and damage funding, the doubling of adaptation finance before 2025, and the provision of public grant financing as the main form of financial support.

• Financial commitments and reforms to achieve the Paris goals.
  The GST should include a commitment for developed country Parties to fulfil their previous climate finance pledges, alongside a commitment to scale up both quantity and quality of climate finance provisions, and the recognition that delivering such investments will require the transformation of the financial system and its structures and processes.

• Respect and promote human rights.
  As recognized by the Paris Agreement, Parties should, when taking action to address climate change, respect, promote, and consider their respective obligations on human rights, including the right to health, and the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. The GST should include a concrete commitment by Parties to effectively integrate human rights in the design, implementation and evaluation of NDCs and LT-LEDS.

• Strengthen our ability to track progress.
  The GST should recommend the development of an evidence infrastructure that builds on pre-existing efforts, and can support monitoring efforts, improve transparency, close data gaps, and provide policy guidance.